Calibration and initial validation of a low-cost computer-based screening audiometer coupled to consumer insert phone-earmuff combination for boothless audiometry

OBJECTIVE: To undertake calibration and preliminary validation of a custom-designed computer-based screening audiometer connected to consumer insert phone-earmuff combination for adult pure tone audiometry.

DESIGN: Part 1 involved electroacoustic measurement and biological calibration of a laptop-earphone pair used for the computer-based audiometry (CBA). Part 2 compared CBA thresholds obtained without a sound booth with those measured using the gold-standard clinical audiometry.

STUDY SAMPLE: 17 young normal-hearing volunteers (Part 1) and 43 normal and hearing loss subjects (Part 2) recruited from an audiology clinic via convenience sampling.

RESULTS: The transducer-device combination produced outputs suitable for measuring thresholds down to 0 dB HL. Threshold pairs obtained from the CBA and clinical audiometry were highly correlated (Spearman's correlation coefficient, ρ = 0.92, p 25 dB HL.

CONCLUSIONS: The use of a computer-based audiometer application with consumer insert phone-earmuff combination can offer a cost-effective solution for boothless screening audiometry.